If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Welcome to Mac-Forums! Join us to comment and to customize your site experience! Members have access to different forum appearance options, and many more functions.

Hi
Having read through many sources unsuccessfully I am hoping someone here can help me.
I have parallels Desktop 6 and windows 7 running on my Macbook pro. OSX 10.6

I have some programs that need windows, but when I double click on the files for those programs it tries to open them in Bootcamp....but it can't find bootcamp or access it - and I don't want it to.....

When I start Parallels it always asks me whether I want to start in windows or bootcamp....I always use Windows.

Sometimes it asks me which one I want, but often it just tries to open in bootcamp. BootCamp is listed as the "default" when this choice comes up.

How do I tell the programs to default to windows 7 rather than try to open something in Bootcamp?

Your post is confusing. "Boot Camp" is not an operating system. It's a helper application designed to assist in creating a partition and installing Windows so that it can be dual booted with OS X.

Is Parallels asking you how you wish to run a Windows program? You can run Windows 7 either from the Boot Camp created partition or the virtual machine created by Parallels. Parallels can use the Boot Camp partition as a virtual machine.

Some programs (games mostly) have to be run from Windows directly because of the graphics requirements while others can be run from the Windows virtual machine. You have to decide how you want to run them.

I know....it is confusing to me too....
Usually when I double click a file that has to open in a windows program (in this case a government application that is quite small) I get a screen with two choices:
1) Windows 7
2) Bootcamp ....this has "(default)" behind it.

Sometimes the program just tries to open using bootCamp and then I get a message saying it "can't Access the hard disk #1" on top of a black-background screen showing it trying boot up in the normal way as if bootCamp was starting.

How would I change it so that windows is the "default", not bootCamp?

I hope this is clearer. If I knew how to post a shot of the screen here, I would.

I don't use Parallels (Fusion is what I use), but I imagine you will have to select that option from within Parallels. In order to run a program using the Boot Camp choice, the machine will have to re-boot to the Windows 7 partition first.

Parallels uses a seamless mode. Which means you can have Windows program icons sitting on your Dock. But as I mentioned in the first reply some Windows programs must be run from natural Windows not a virtual machine.

Thanks for your input and time on this.
I can't find an option to make Windows in Parallels the default. The program I use runs fine on Windows in Parallel, but as I noted, it defaults to Bootcamp....but then doesn't know what/how to do it.

As I stated above, I'm not very familiar with the workings of Parallels, however, I'm sure there has to be an option selection so that you can choose how to start a Windows program. Perhaps the answer can be found on the Parallels User's Forums if no one here replies with the solution. Here is the LINK to their forums.